So yeah

So yeah, I haven’t blogged in a while. Mostly because I don’t care much about blogging and also because the blogging universe drives me batty.

So really, the most accurate way of expressing it all is via Tumblr Gif Talk.

So here ya go:

So Pope Benedict resigned and I was like all:

THEN I was like all:

And then Pope Francis was elected and I was like:

Although seriously, I knew he was ordained after Ye Old V2 and seemed casual about liturgy so I admit that I was a little wary and a little like:

Why? Because even though I’m a post V2 baby and I attend Ye Old Novus Ordo…well..

..I was liking where B16 was taking us on this.

But let’s just say that one of the last times I went to Mass, the priest said, “Since I can’t think of anything witty to say, I guess I’ll just say the closing prayer.”

SHUTUP.

Okay. When that lame kind of stuff goes down, I just try to think:

Yeah. Me neither.

So…just..

But please don’t give these guys any hint that that is okay. Pope. Please. Mkay?

And then I go to another Mass and it’s all chant-y and no one messes around or makes stuff up as they go and I’m like:

And I’m thinkin’….should I blog on all of this? Because it’s pretty metaphorical and stuff.

Nah. Too much else to do. Homeschooling and sh**.

But then the hits just keep on coming. The implication that we’re in a “fresh new era” and that it’s *all* so much better now, without mozettas and crap. Even from bishops! Talkin’ about the Refreshing Fresh Air and Fresh New Tone of Freshness. Not to speak of the Refreshing Simplicity of the Fresh New Simple Tone. So I’m all:

And trying to hold it in. Especially when people are all intense about the new Pope, who is great, (I think), but they’re all:

And they’re all like: ERMYGAWD ITHINKIMSUPPOSEDTOHELPTHEPOORBECAUSEPOPEFRANCIS and I’m all like:

40 Responses

LOL. Very enjoyable creative post. That was you. That was expression.
The Vatican culture in the physical sense was always “signing” “gifing” all along…(I just think it was subconsciously signing God the Father (not Christ as King)…Father as per Italian culture…it’s the Father who alone of the Trinity was never “sent”). Into this signing culture came a reverse signer, Francis…Foucault’s battle of the dominant discourse against a revolutionary minor discourse. Pope Nicholas V began the second St. Peter’s arguing in writing that most men needed the largest physical Church to buttress their faith…a big gif. Pope Julius II and others did the rest and built it. Pope Nicholas V was a real “signer” “gifer” at heart. But the signing buildings will outlast Francis alas. Fr.Z’s essay on “what’s he up to” helped me alot: Francis is faced with droves of Catholics leaving in past decades in the Americas often to intimate micro churches and is “signing” the poor Christ and warmth for them and their potential fellow travelers. What can any one Pope do and on what problem? Benedict felt the loss of Europe; Francis feels the loss in the Americas. The blogs discuss neither but Popes must answer for macro problems one day to God…not for blog problems. The former loss of Europe was ostensibly intellectual and needed an intellectual Pope; the latter Americas loss was about intimacy and the poor Christ ostensibly. But each Pope can only affect historic mass movements only so much.

Well, as a non-Catholic I admit that I really love Pope Francis…. But it’s really because he shows what true social justice is: anti-abortion and strongly pro-life combined with real support for the poor. Can’t logically have one without the other.

Point being, Caroline, that Pope Benedict taught “anti-abortion …and real support for the poor.” It’s not like Pope Francis invented it. And people are acting like he did, and that Pope Benedict ignored the poor. Stupid.

Amy, you’re not intellectual; you’re intelligent. I put the difference thus: intelligent people don’t worry that the world as it is will spoil their lovely theories, and so keep an open mind in the Chestertonian sense.

1) I am all-peace-and-justicey Catholic Worker type and find eveything he says like “duh.” I do not indulge in an “in-your-face-George-Weigel-war-promoter” (although he unapologetically was…) chant, but perhaps, the small crystalline pure remnant faithful who was looking for its small teeny pure Church needs to pay attention, if they are truly going to keep the faith. Actually for me, I keep going “its about time.”

2) As such, Francis has not yet challenged me. Benedict, even though I was soooo in agreement with his encyclicals (which could stand a little more air time over his pious short teachings), still challenged me intellectually. I do all the Pope Francis stuff. All day, every day. My heart, usually my body, and my mind are in the ghetto every day, nearly every minute. So…I get it, it is 25 years of this practice for me. However,I never took a class because I knew the material. I took my classes and sought my instructors on what I did not know. Hence, I loved Benedict.

3) I do think the US needs a Christian authority figure who is always talking about the poor. Because Americans are ignoring the Sermon on the Mount. One of the leading Catholic politicians of the last election cycle was pro-abortion. The other a disciple of a philosophy of selfishness. So, American Catholics could afford a little more demonstration of what they should do. When Benedict said similarly, he was reviled by Catholic thinkers like Jody Bottum, George Weigel, and Deal Hudson. So, clearly, now that words haven’t worked, it is demonstration time.

It’s everything I’ve been thinking, and discussing way too loudly with my husband while the children are sleeping except better because animated GIFs are involved. I think this is about the only commentary I can stand right now.

Well…I say there is a difference between Benedict and Francis. And this is a point of difference and necessary conversation.

For instance, Benedict is “weak” on the Gospel of Luke. (It would be better to say, he probably does not draw much about his personal relationship to Jesus from this Gospel. Claiming Benedict is “weak” on anything, including string theory, is a risky proposition.) His books definitely note this. There is a paucity of Lucan citations. Which is fine. It just means that his understanding of Luke, the Gospel for the poor, is limited and perhaps not the encounter he has with Jesus. For Benedict, lifetime loyal clergyman to the highest levels of the Church, it is Christ in the Church where he meets Jesus. I claim the lay have a different task. On this matter of emphasis and clear signals, not only do the popes differ, Francis might have it correct. The encounter with Jesus starts for the modern man with the poor. This is how we should encounter our Church, where the sacramental life feeds and nourishes our life with the needy.

I do NOT agree with Fr. Z and his crowd at all, as an archetype of opposing views on this matter. I suggest a focus on that aspect of Catholicism is going to result in a that “smaller purer Church,” and eagerness for which denies evangelical demands of the Gospel. This is where the liturgical purity political party of Catholicism and I depart company. I do not think that a “better liturgy” will result in enhanced anything numbers, or holiness or evangelism, except enhancing the aesthetic pleasures of a small group. I think that this is a distraction from the US lay person’s strongest obligation-to meet Jesus in the poor in a personal way.

From this, and I dare to say, only this, will the “large numbers” develop that were suggested by advocates of liturgical discipline. The world (and each of us individually) needs to see the Church and its members reaching out to individually meet and care for the poor.

For those longing for that Benedictine time at the end of the Roman Empire, I want to encourage folks to remember that one of the biggest promoters of Benedict, Gregory I, was nothing but aggressive in demanding his clergy and the wealthy go out and take care of the poor. We are in a similar Imperial State and need to recognize that this is vital, first to show what really matters to the world, then to actually meet Jesus, and then to take care of the person before us who has needs.

There are several ways to meet Jesus. I think it is obvious however with the public attention given this man (and quite frankly, Mother Theresa and others less famous like Greg Boyle), the evangelical mechanism has been obvious, but deliberately avoided. Encountering Jesus with the poor is quite difficult and life-changing, but isn’t that how meeting Jesus is supposed to be?

Therefore, I do not think that there is established a false dichotomy between Benedict and Francis, I think there is a difference and maybe Francis has it correct.

I say this, prayerfully for Benedict, who I miss. Francis, frankly is not the teacher I need. But I think the signs are obvious that it is what the world needs and has been missing.

Possible explanations for the friendlier reception of Pope Francis:
(a) he preaches directly and simply
(b) he makes bold gestures like JP2 did
(c) he was little known to the world before his election, whereas liberals inside and outside the Church had a long list of grudges against B16 before he was elected.
(d) he’s just so telegenic!

I have read all three of his encyclicals (attempting to focus First Things and readers of the Anchoress on the 3rd encyclical in particular). Truth in Love may be the most clear and direct social encyclical ever written. That I later discovered the Benedictine connection of B16 (he is an Oblate) helps me understand the re-focusing of the faithful toward community. I read 2 of the three Jesus of Nazareth books. He has Lucan citations, but the depth with which he attends to what Luke says alone is secondary, considering Luke merely a back-up singer to Matthew. I suspect the most recent book cannot avoid the Luke, focsuing as he does on the Infancy narratives.

One can start with a treatment of the Lucan beautitudes. These are not incomplete beautitudes, awaiting a better editor to add “poor in spirit.” Nor does Luke mean “poor in spirit” and Matthew was just adding a few words implied in Luke. The Woe to thee rich line suggests “Blessed are the poor” has a distinct meaning. The Lucan beautitides are a separate distinct message to a different group of people. This type of specific treatment of Luke is absent in Benedict’s works. Luke is mentioned, but usually at the points of parallel

So…I repeat, Benedict does not have as complete an understanding of the transcendental experience of Christ in the poor as clearly as Francis. The absence of equal depth of treatment of the Lucan narratives in his books is an example of this, since scholarly and teaching activities is precisely, in my opinion, Benedict’s greatest achievements.

I have sought Benedict as a teacher, however the mature pupil identifies the strengths and weaknesses of one’s teacher. Benedict had clear areas of Christian life in which I would find a limited education, which is a function of being human. I do not think Francis will offer too much for me as a teacher, because quite frankly he will be doing remedial education for the materialist liberals and their barely diffuse spiritual discipline as well as the conservative arm of Western Catholcism which has pride in its orthodoxy and only bare feints into approaching charitably matters of poverty (one can watch the stumblings of First Things’ RR Reno in the past year as he ham-handedly attempts to embrace these matters to chart out a conservative path into “life with the poor.”) Quite simply, we as a whole, need demonstrations on humility and charity, all reflecting into a life with the poor. (Contra Weigel this week in First Thngs, not just the clergy need humility.)